


No Cash Value

by fullborn



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Canon Typical Language / Homophobia / Horror, Emetophobia, M/M, Pennywise (IT) Being an Asshole, set after the paul bunyan scene in IT chapter 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 16:53:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20567690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fullborn/pseuds/fullborn
Summary: Richie's scared of one thing more than everything else, more than Paul Bunyan or clowns or dying in a sewer full of shit. Pennywise changes faces accordingly.





	No Cash Value

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you Bill Hader for making me feel an emotion. I get it. And not that Richie needs more pain in his life but this just kind of happened. It's the repression.
> 
> You can tell which bit from The Shining I found the most disturbing.

The arcade token might as well be made of lead, for all it weighs down Richie’s pocket the whole long walk back to the Derry Town House Hotel. Heavy as a handful of rocks; shit, the kind of thing you’d shovel into your pockets before taking a dive into the inviting canal below as if that might keep you down — but hell, in Derry everything floats. Not even the millstone of his miserable fucking childhood and all the terror and shame growing up in that town had meant could keep it all from rising to the surface like so many red balloons, all ninety-fucking-nine of them. 

He pauses at the bridge. Looks down at the dark water, where Mike had told them Adrian Mellon had been thrown to his death by a pair of dumb, hate-crazed shitkickers and a kid barely out of middle school. _Smear the Queer, family friendly fun! _Step right up, right to the edge of the fucking thing and jump right off! 

Richie shakes himself, keeps walking. Ignores the way his heart’s still pounding all this time later, even after walking for hours in a blind haze as if it’s possible to outpace the horror rising in his chest with every step. 

(_Richiiiiiiiie! I know your dirty little secret, oh yes, your dirty little secret!) _

It knows, and it had laughed. And Richie can laugh at just about everything but the way the clown had said it — out there in the open with such glee — had made him freeze up like he’d never be able to speak again, let alone wheeze out so much as a chuckle. 

(_What’s wrong Richie? You look awfully queer, dear, positively pale with fright_)

Ben and Bev look up as he pushes past the double door and heads toward the staircase, concern and alarm written plain on their faces as he tells them he’s leaving. _Sayonara, ladies and gents, it’s been a real blast but getting terrorised by a killer clown just isn’t all that fun past the age of twelve,_ he thinks, mounting the stairs two at at a time. _Get out while you can._

‘Richie —’ Beverly says, but he’s gone baby gone. Slamming his door behind him and twisting the lock shut behind him. 

Barely a minute of peace before someone raps on the door. Ben, bringing out the motivational speech: the friends that stick together die together, yada yada ya. We can’t do this without your razor wit and boyish good-looks, Richie, we’d be lost without you — or something to that effect.

‘Save it, Haystack,’ Richie grunts, staring down at the silver gleam of the token in his palm. ‘Not in the mood.’

Ben’s voice comes muffled through the old wood, older than the pair of them combined like everything else in this quaint shithole of an establishment. ‘Come on, Richie,’ he says, pleading. ‘You know we need you. Don’t go.’

‘Fuck off, man. Only thing I know is I don’t want to fucking die in the town I grew up in, that shit’s embarrassing.’ 

But Ben doesn’t fuck off, just keeps up a string of frankly annoying Hallmark slogans until Richie groans in defeat.

‘I’ll sleep on it, okay? Jesus.’

‘Just see how you feel tomorrow.’ Then, tacked on with a fervent honesty only Ben can manage: ‘Thanks, Richie. I really appreciate it.’

Which makes Richie feel all the more like a world-class dick as he throws his bag onto the bed starts to manically gather his things before Ben’s footsteps have even receded down the passageway_. Richie Tozier Does A Runner! _He throws open the window, pauses, heads to the bathroom to grab his toothbrush and razor — and lets out a yelp.

Eddie is sitting in the tub, lanky legs poking out over the rim, tired and pale-looking, eyes closed. They fly open, meeting Richie’s, and then Eddie is also yelling in alarm and they’re two grown men having a fucking shared conniption in a hotel bathroom.

‘Jesus, Eds!’ Richie clutches his heart. ‘You get lost on the way to your mom’s bed, huh? Also. This is _my_ fucking bathroom.’

Eddie’s face creases with consternation. ‘I know, asshole. Where else am I gonna hide from the others?’ 

‘In your own tub, like a grown man.’ Richie notices the shadows creasing Eddie’s eyes, the nervous tapping of his fingers on his knees. ‘You, uh. Everything okay?’

‘No. Everything’s not okay. There’s a psychotic clown out there that’s going to kill each and every one of us and dance on our dismembered remains, remember? _Fuck._’ He wheezes once, pulls out his inhaler and takes a drag like a man taking a heavy bong hit - not that Richie would know anything about all that, officer.

‘Yeah. Vaguely.’ Richie sinks to the cold floor at the other end of the tub, looks up at Eddie. ‘Think I’m gonna bounce for this one, Eds. You should think about doing the same.’ 

‘…I am.’ 

‘Good. I’d hate to see you get your adorable face ripped off. Be a real bummer.’ He clasps his hands together and grips tight, thinking about It, thinking about the ways It would get each one of them, help graduate the Losers to the Dead Old Party — the drinks are free but the initiation’s a real bitch!

Eddie chuckles, leans his head back against the tile. ‘You can be a real idiot, Rich, but you’re sure as hell not dumb.’ 

‘Aw, shucks, mister,’ he says, slipping into an old-timey shoeshine boy Voice before he can stop himself. ‘My poppa says all that fancy schooling’s gonna make my head explode. Only so much learning a man can take before —’

‘If you’re going, I’d like to go with you,’ says Eddie softly, cutting off Richie’s babble. He freezes. Stares at the bob of Eddie’s exposed throat, trying to figure out if he heard him wrong. ‘It’s funny how I never knew I missed you, but I do now. Like twenty-seven years of it are hitting me all at once. I want to know you, Richie. I want to stay alive.’

Richie knows he’s doing that big-eyed thing he does on the rare occasion words fail him, heart pounding like an arrhythmia-suffering jackrabbit. It’s not like that, he tells himself, wiping his sweaty palms on his knees. Eddie wants out, that’s the main thing; probably wants to save on petrol, do a bit of carpooling, reduce the risk of carbon dioxide emissions in the local area. And if that means leaving with Richie? Well, Richie’s not going to complain.

‘Uh,’ says Richie valiantly. ‘Uh, sure. I guess you can tag along for the ride.’ 

‘I knew I could count on you.’ 

This is all a bit too sincere and heartfelt than Richie is normally able to endure without shovelling shit on the moment until it crumbles, but for some reason he can’t think of a single glib thing to say. And Eddie opens his eyes and looks right at him and the tidal-wave of feelings he thought buried under a mountain of adulthood and good old-fashioned denial come rearing back up exactly as they did in the restaurant last night, set to pull him under. Oh, fuck. 

‘We ought to get going, if we wanna make it out of here before shit hits the fan.’ Eddie gets out of the bath and then he’s standing over Richie, suddenly tall and right there and above him in a way prepubescent-Richie didn’t have the guts or the sick desire to fantasise about, but which makes adult-Richie’s throat tighten in a nervous panic. 

Eddie holds out his hand. ‘Come on, Richie,’ he says, frowning. 

Richie takes his palm, allows him to haul him upright. Ducks his head so he won’t have to meet Eddie’s brown eyes, look too hard at the new lines etched around his adult features. But he can’t help himself. 

He swallows.

‘Uhhh,’ he says. ‘Where to, Captain?’

But Eddie’s grip has tightened on his hand, a faint crease splitting the worry-lines on his forehead as he stares in Richie’s face. ‘I remember. How you’d look at me like that, Richie, like how you’re looking now. Why d’you do that, huh? Got something on my face?’

‘You’re imagining things, Eds,’ says Richie, hollow bravado bolstering his shaking voice. ‘Nothing to see but that great big greasy schnoz of yours.’

‘Maybe you’re disappointed.’ Eddie sounds thoughtful. Distant. ‘Guess we can’t all turn out like Ben, that it? Not like Richie Tozier’s going to win Miss America any time soon, either.’

‘Should hope not,’ jokes Richie, even though that one kind of hurts coming from Eddie, cause yeah, Richie feels like a bit of a bespectacled turd next to Ben’s chiselled jaw and Beverley’s figure and Bill’s confidence and Mike’s compellingly deep voice. Eddie’s sympathetic, dumb, perfectly grown-up face. ‘Come on, man, quit whining. We got a boat to catch.’

‘You think I don’t know what it means, you looking at me like that? ’ says Eddie, and the grip on Richie’s hand is painful now. He can feel his heart leap into his throat, start a little jig, tap-dance, whatever it takes to make him drop dead here and now before Eddie can finish him off. ‘I’ve always known.’

‘Fuck, Eddie, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Let go.’ His glasses are misting up with the heat from his cheeks; he blinks, rubs his face, looks anywhere but into Eddie’s face as Eddie continues:

‘I can see it when you think I’m not looking, like you’re starving for it. Me. Is that right, Richie?’ 

Guess we’re all grown up, thinks Richie, guess the ugliness of adult life has finally come home to roost in Derry and to shit down on them from the rafters. Nothing like a bit of burning hot shame to remind him that his childhood is well and truly gone, nothing nice or innocent left to show. Eddie’s right. He can’t even look at his old best friend without feeling a perverted need to touch him — not in the easy way they touched as kids, no siree, this is is something new and ugly and needy that fills him up with fearful disgust whenever he looks down at his own hands. 

‘It’s not —’ Richie chokes. ‘I don’t want you to think —’

‘You want this?’ murmurs Eddie, sliding his fingers into Richie’s belt-loops and pressing him up against the wall, grinding their hips together with maddening ease. ‘Is this what you want?’

This is all wrong, for a multitude of reasons that go cantering across Richie’s addled brain like a herd of scattered ponies as he groans and squeezes his eyes tight shut:

A) Eddie has a wife. Eddie is married. Eddie is not like him.  
B) Eddie should not want to touch Richie, even if he _were _like him. Richie is _Richie._  
C) Now is not the fucking time for this to happen, shoved up against the stained grouting of the Derry Town House Hotel when there’s a murderous clown prowling outside with single murderous intent…and it’s certainly not the time for his dick to stiffen or his mind to freeze under a spotlight of confusion and want and fear.  
D) Eddie sounds fucking _weird._

There’s hands tugging at his waistband, thin hands: Eddie’s hands. He can feel them insistent and hungry at the buckle of his belt and yet he can only think _This isn’t how I want it. Stop. Please stop. This isn’t right. _But he finds himself saying, eyes still screwed tight, voice low and shaky: ‘Quit wearing his face, you fucker.’

The hands stop moving. He opens his eyes, and instantly wishes he hadn’t.

‘Jesus,’ he croaks, mouth hanging open as he stares at the thing that’s almost but not quite his good friend Eddie Kaspbrak. 

Eddie grins, and the grin splits the skin where his dimples should be and cracks open his cheeks with a sick _snap _like a felled electric pylon_; _blood trickles down his face to his chin and drips onto the tiles at their feet. ‘Ding ding ding!’ Eddie cackles, voice no longer his own but the whooping, manic glee of _It. _‘Give the smart boy a prize, ladies and gents — step right up, Richie, don’t be shy!’

Richie tries to scream. Whimpers instead.

The thing that is not Eddie leans closer, allowing Richie to see the way one of his eyes has drifted off to the side on its own freaky fucking trajectory. The stink of the sewer comes hot and rancid from its gaping mouth, rolling over him in a choking wave. He gags.

‘Poor Eddie,’ It croons, cloyingly sweet in Richie’s ear. ‘No idea what dear old Trashmouth wants to put in his dirty trash-mouth, no idea that his old buddy’s nothing more than a stinking little fa—’

‘Shut up!’ howls Richie, raw fear clawing him every which way as the word threatens to slip from Eddie’s bleeding lips. ‘_Fuck_ you.’

‘Go ahead, Richie, I won’t stop you! Not like darling Eddie here.’ It nuzzles at his neck and he flinches as something wet and horrible laps at his ear like It’s trying to puncture his eardrum with its fucking tongue. ‘You can keep on lying to your Loser friends; I _promise_ I won’t tell. Now, be a good boy.’ 

It grabs him by the hair, twisting his head to expose the meat of his neck; razor sharp teeth descend from Eddie’s gums with a multitudinous ripping noise, poised to tear out the panicked heartbeat of his throat. Richie knows then and there that he’s going to die in a hotel bathroom, for Christsake, and for some reason that thought terrifies him the most. He yells, thrashes against its tender clawed grip.

It chuckles, deep and alien enough to make his skin crawl. ‘I’ll eat you up, Richie, all that delectable delicious_ fear_,’ It says, voice bubbling up from the depths of a ravenous, endless maw clotted with hundreds of teeth made for flesh-tearing. ‘Eat you up starting with your _cock._’

‘Might I suggest a nice complementary Chianti?’ Richie chokes. 

The creature’s drool strings down onto his face, teeth inches away as It pauses in confusion — and that’s when Richie finally throws up, which for once in the past forty-eight hours is a win for Tozier & Team because somehow most of his semi-digested lunch lands right in Pennywise’s leering face._ (Bullseye, folks, oh it’s chucks a minute with this guy. Get it? Upchucks!) _The thing wearing Eddie’s face hisses in rage, vomit in its eyes, and Richie takes the opportunity to kick it in the nuts and prove without a shadow of a doubt that even doppelgänger-Eddie has a pair because It staggers back with a deafening howl.

It’s a lucky thing his legs have gone boneless with panic because Richie hits the floor hard, cracks his chin on the tiles but he’s not complaining — figures a few bruises are infinitely more preferable than getting his face ripped off by one of the creature’s flailing hands as he crawls to the bedroom. You bet your fur it is!

‘Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck,’ he gasps, expecting a taloned grip to seize one his ankles at any second. ‘Oh Jesus _fuck._’

He staggers to his feet as It lets out a bellow that just about turns his bowels to water but he manages to make it to the door without shitting his pants, finds it locked. Stupid Richie, stupid fucking Trashmouth! His hands are shaking so hard he barely gets the key out his pocket, fumbles with the lock right as It lurches out of the bathroom with murder glowing bright in its yellow eyes. Mouth splitting Eddie’s face open in a terrifying grin.

‘Richiiiiiiiie!’ It calls, nightmarish. ‘Why won’t you staaaaaay?’

It breaks from a shamble into a demonic run, and that’s when the handle finally turns under his desperate fingers and he falls out the door onto his ass in the corridor beyond. He kicks it shut and there’s a _WHAM _as It comes slamming up against the wood panelling. A pause. The knob rattles. 

Richie knows he should get up and run but his whole body is rigid with fear, heart beating right out of his pathetically un-reinforced ribcage. Can’t bring himself to make it any further; if It wants to come bursting through the door and chomp down on his face he’ll just have to let It do its thing.

Rattle rattle. 

Silence. 

Rattle. 

The handle begins to lower, ever so slowly. Deliciously slow. 

‘Richie?’ comes a voice to his right, and Richie lets out a strangled cry as he sees Eddie approaching from the staircase, cautious, a frown of confusion creasing his extraordinarily filthy face. He looks like he’s rolled around in a tub of shit, which Richie sure would like to tell him but the words refuse to come. 

The door-handle stops moving.

‘Are you okay?’ Eddie crouches at his side, tentatively reaching out a hand and something in Richie snaps. 

‘Do _not_ fucking touch me!’

Eddie’s face crumples with bewildered hurt, swiftly replaced with a more familiar expression of worry. ‘Richie? What happened?’

‘Nothing_ happened,’ _Richie rasps, and leaps to his feet. Makes it halfway down the staircase before Eddie starts to trail after him like a particularly useless guide dog. ‘What happened to you, huh? Your makeup’s running.’

Eddie doesn’t say anything, just watches as Richie ducks under the hotel bar and pours himself a stiff few fingers of Jack with shaking hands. Slops most of it over the counter. Drink, rinse and repeat. The burn chases some of the horror away, fills his chest with something other than fear and dampens the words reeling around his head. The words _Eddie_ had said. No. _It. _The words_ It _had said. Eddie would never, Eddie would never say anything like —

He’s only aware that he’s crying after he sinks his third drink. Tears hot on his face, shit, he hasn’t cried since his mother died way back in 1995 but here he is, leaking water all over the place like a doomed canoe. Fuck. 

Eddie takes the bottle from his hands and steals his glass, pours himself an overflowing glass of amber. His eyes are a little wide, white behind all the muck coating his face, and — Richie’s only realising this now — he looks just as scared as he is.

‘Did you see It?’ Eddie asks.

Richie drags a hand across his mouth and lets out a bitter laugh. ‘Saw your fucking ma, Eds, trying to get me to stay the night. _Au naturel._ Terrifying stuff.’

‘Stop it.’ Eddie doesn’t look annoyed, even after the cheap jab at his psycho mother: he just looks…disappointed. Vulnerable, with rising hysteria. ‘Just stop it, Richie. Bill’s not here, the others aren’t here, you don’t have to pretend, okay? I’m sick of having to be brave. I don’t care if it’s what It wants, I’m fucking terrified and I’ll stay fucking terrified until this is all over. So sue me.’

‘Hey.’ Richie feel terrible. ‘Eds. I’m sorry. You’re right…I’m just as scared as you. Maybe more.’

‘Don’t call me Eds,’ mumbles Eddie, but he lets Richie reach out and take his hand. And Richie finds his heart is slowing, not speeding up; that this is quite alright as he holds onto Eddie like he can drain the other man’s terror and add it to his own. He’d take it all if he could, let It tear him apart limb from limb if it meant Eddie would be okay. He would.

They hold hands for a long while. The fear fades to a faint hum in his heart and his palm where he can feel Eddie’s pulse thrumming in time with his own, but it’s manageable. Bearable. Like the nervous churning of his thankfully empty stomach. 

When Eddie finally frees his hand the room has gone dark and quiet, the same as Eddie’s eyes. He looks at Richie and Richie looks away, suddenly lightheaded.

‘God, you stink,’ he says, wiping his eyes. 

The moment breaks: Eddie laughs, gets up and flaps his muddy arms. ‘Don’t remember shitting myself but maybe I did, kind of got distracted screaming my head off. Gonna go clean up.’

‘Never change, Eds.’

‘Fuck off.’

Richie watches him go, not knowing that Eddie’s about to get stabbed in the face by Henry Bowers and that this will set the fear going a hundred times more powerfully than the fucking try-hard clown was ever able to do with him pressed up against the wall and its rank breath oozing into his face. Not knowing that all it takes to dry up his mouth with terror is Eddie yelling from the upstairs landing. But he’s no idiot. He suspects. 

Richie downs the rest of Eddie’s whiskey, and stares at his sweaty palms. Takes the arcade token out of his pocket and sets it spinning on the glossy surface of the bar, watching it glimmer innocently in the dim light as if the memories attached to it could be forgiven for all its beauty. What a stupid fucking thought. There’s a rotten core at the centre of everything in Derry, even him.

The screaming starts and Richie goes weak at the knees.

It’s definitely the worst hotel stay of his entire life. He promises himself — running up the stairs two at a time with his heart hammering out of his chest — that if by some miracle he makes it out alive the first thing he’s going to do is write a scathing review of the Derry Town House Hotel. There’s far too much blood, for starters. Far too much.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments appreciated


End file.
